March 31, 2010

It took 100 years and a determined president to get a health care bill through Congress. In this young City of Angels and others, it may take a bit longer to find the right mix of ingredients needed to create a transit-friendly environment and a feeling of community.

The recent elections in Iraq, the fifth since the 2003 invasion by the United States and its allies, have generated predictable polemics. Some commentators, almost exclusively those who originally supported the invasion, see the vote as a triumph for democracy that retroactively vindicates the Bush administration’s decision to go to war Mission Accomplished at last. Thus, in a Wall Street Journal column on the eve of the vote, investment banker and former journalist Bartle Bull asserted that if the election turned out to be free and fair, arguments against the war in Iraq would be consigned forever to the graves they deserve. The war’s critics scoff at such talk as deluded, countering that even if the election is a genuinely positive outcome, it does not justify the false pretexts under which the war was launched, the human toll on both sides, or the other costs including destabilization in the region. Each side, in other words, argues that history’s verdict is in its favor: What a surprise.